Machine vision systems for the automatic inspection of products include subsystems for inspection of marks on those products, and for reporting the quality of certain characteristics of the inspected mark that the manufacturer of the product considers important.
A "search" component is a common component of many such machine vision systems. Such a component, with a model of a sought-for image in its memory, will search a video image for a region that corresponds to the model.
A "defect analysis" component is another component of some machine vision systems. Such a component, given the model of the sought-for image, will compare the model with the image found in the video inspection, and process the differences in whatever manner is selected by the manufacturer.
Character quality inspection systems have been devised that inspect printed characters on a device or a label and report on the quality or accuracy of the characters.
There is need, however, for improvement in machine vision systems for inspecting the quality of marks on integrated circuit devices, and for reporting comprehensively the various aspects of the quality of the mark and of individual characters of the mark.